More thoughts on No Country for Old Men

In the comments section of the recent No Country review, Joe asked me in what ways were the Coens not IN their film. The answer calls for a new post that hopefully makes some of the other points in my original post a bit more clear.

I made an analogy that the Coens, like they do with regional dialects, once again did an impersonation of a storytelling trope, in this case its a somewhat existential, pseudo-post apocalyptic, anti-western. They sparkle it with their own brand of gallows humor, cartoonish villains, and impeccable knack for action and drama, all of which have rightfully given the Coens an auteur status and cult following. However, they fall back too frequently on caricatures as opposed to something less removed from themselves, and as I think the case is with their new film, they fell back on generic themes as opposed to treating them more personally (maybe it was how they addressed the themes that was generic). And I don't think the humor, the drama, and the colorful characters can provide enough voice to outweigh this issue.

This was what I referred to by saying the Coens were not IN the movie. The film is a throwback to late-modernism and filmmakers such as Melville, Peckinpah, and Herzog, whether conscious of such similarities or not. But what does this new film of theirs say about cinema? About the human condition? About the Coens themselves? I sometimes wish there was an easy way for me to discuss the overall problems with film criticism, let alone when they are then applied to specific films, but I'll have to think about that more clearly before attempting to address it.